Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/615

 PROFIT-SHARING AND COOPERATION 595

after an unfavorable discussion of cooperation, says in regard to profit-sharing: "That something of the sort is practicable, with the exercise of no more of patience, pains, and mutual good faith than it is reasonable to expect of many employers and many bodies of workmen, I am greatly disposed to believe. Many experiments, and probably much disappointment and some fail- ures, will be required to develop the possibilities of this scheme and determine its best working shape, yet in the end I see no reason to doubt that such a relation will be introduced exten- sively with the most beneficial results."' General Walker's pro- nounced views are no doubt due to the great emphasis which he places on-the functions of the entrepreneur.

Mr. Cairnes holds "that the condition of any substantial improvement of a permanent kind in the laborer's lot is that the separation of industrial classes into laborers and capitalists which now prevails shall 7Wt be maintained ; that the laborer shall cease to be a laborer — in a word, that profits shall be brought to reinforce the wages fund;"= "that he should be, in one way or other, lifted out of the groove in which he at present works, and placed in a position compatible with his becoming a sharer in equal proportion with others in the general advantages from industrial progress." 3 The solution advocated is that the work- men become cooperators, that is, capitalists on a small scale. But the process is not through profit-sharing, as with others, but by means of saving. To this the " chief obstacles in the way are

not physical, are not economical, but moral or intellectual

Cooperation — the contribution by many workmen of their savings toward a common fund which they employ as capital and cooper- ate in turning to profit — constitutes the one and only solution of our present problem ; the sole path by which the laboring classes as a whole, or even in any large number, can emerge from their condition of mere hand-to-mouth living, to share in the gains and honor of advancing civilization." ••

Professor Jevons takes the other view, and agrees with most

'F. A. Walker, The Wages Question, p. 281.

'Cairnes, Leading Principles of Political Economy, p. 284.

^Ibid., p. 285. *Ibid., p. 289.